Five Takeaways About Trump’s Taxes

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Democrats in the U.S. Congress released six years’ worth of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns following a years-long legal fight in which Trump sought to keep the information private. The newly publicized records amount to nearly 6,000 pages, including the personal tax returns of Trump and his wife, Melania, from 2015 to 2020, as well as tax returns from Trump’s businesses. Here are five key takeaways from the documents: 1. Trump’s personal income varied greatly year by year. Of the six years covered by the documents from 2015 to 2020, Trump’s adjusted gross income ranged from a low ofmore

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US Congressman-Elect Santos Investigated for Lying About His Past

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U.S. Representative-elect George Santos of New York was under investigation by Long Island prosecutors on Wednesday after revelations surfaced that the now-embattled Republican lied about his heritage, education and professional pedigree as he campaigned for office. Despite intensifying doubt about his fitness to hold federal office, Santos has shown no signs of stepping aside — even as he publicly admitted to a long list of lies. Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly, a Republican, said the fabrications and inconsistencies were “nothing short of stunning.” “The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have anmore

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Biden Renomination Pursuit Could Be No Sure Thing

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President Joe Biden, currently vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has said he would take time over the holidays to discuss with family members whether he should seek re-election in 2024. White House and Democratic Party officials say it is almost certain Biden will run again. But will he secure his party’s nomination? An ideal place to explore that question is Prince George’s County, Maryland, where Biden received 89% support — his highest percentage in the 2020 general election. Only about one-fourth of the 400,000 eligible voters in Prince George’s County usually cast ballots in major elections. Regardless of themore

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US House Bans TikTok on Official Devices

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The popular Chinese video app TikTok has been banned from all U.S. House of Representatives-managed devices, according to the House’s administration arm, mimicking a law soon to go into effect banning the app from all U.S. government devices. The app is considered “high risk due to a number of security issues,” the House’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) said in a message sent on Tuesday to all lawmakers and staff and must be deleted from all devices managed by the House. The new rule follows a series of moves by U.S. state governments to ban TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd,more

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Lake Loses Suit Over Her Defeat in Arizona Governor’s Race

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A judge has thrown out Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, rejecting her claim that problems with ballot printers at some polling places on Election Day were the result of intentional misconduct. In a decision Saturday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, found that the court did not find clear and convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake had alleged had affected the result of the 2022 general election. Lake will appeal the ruling, she said in a statement.more

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Georgia Special Grand Jury Wraps Up Probe of Trump, Allies

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A special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election in the southern U.S. state of Georgia appears to be wrapping up its work, but many questions remain. The investigation is one of several that could result in criminal charges against the former president as he asks voters to return him to the White House in 2024. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who began investigating nearly two years ago, has said she will go where the facts lead. It would be an extraordinary step if she choosesmore

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Final Report on Jan. 6 Attack Points Finger at Trump

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The committee formed by the House of Representatives to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol on Thursday released its final report, an 845-page set of documents supporting the committee’s claim that the attack was directly caused by former President Donald Trump and represented the final act in a “multipart conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.” The product of more than 17 months of investigation, the report is the distillation of evidence gathered from thousands of witness interviews, documents and subpoenaed electronic communications. According to the committee, “That evidence has led tomore

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Biden White House Navigates Jan. 6 Committee Recommendation to Prosecute Trump

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The House select committee probing the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol is scheduled to release its final report Thursday, referring former president Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation and potential prosecution for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden. As Attorney General Merrick Garland considers whether to accept the recommendation, the White House has been treading carefully to avoid the appearance it is targeting a potential political opponent in the 2024 election. On numerous occasions White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has emphasized that the Whitemore

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US Senate Passes $1.7 Trillion Bill to Fund Government, Ukraine Aid

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The Senate passed a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill Thursday that finances federal agencies through September and provides another large round of aid to Ukraine one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dramatic address to a joint meeting of Congress. The bill, which runs for 4,155 pages, includes about $772.5 billion for domestic programs and $858 billion for defense and would finance federal agencies through the fiscal year at the end of September. The bill passed by a vote of 68-29 and now goes to the House for a final vote before it can be sent to President Joe Bidenmore

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US Congressional Leaders Unveil New Spending Plan to Avert a Government Shutdown

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U.S. congressional leaders early Tuesday unveiled a more than $1.6 trillion spending and policy plan to fund the government through the end of next September, including billions of dollars in new aid for Ukraine to fight its war against Russia, a 10% boost in defense spending and revised controls on certifying the election of U.S. presidents. The measure, which also includes about $40 billion to help U.S. communities recover from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters, is likely to be the last major piece of legislation that lawmakers will consider in the current session of Congress. But the 4,155-page billmore

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Kari Lake Challenges Her Defeat in Arizona Governor’s Race

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Kari Lake, the Republican defeated in the Arizona governor’s race, is formally challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, asking a court to throw out certified election results from the state’s most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor’s election in that county. The lawsuit filed late Friday by Lake centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on Election Day in Maricopa County. The challenge filed in Maricopa County Superior Court also alleges hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there’s no evidence that’s true. Lake has refusedmore

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Viktor Bout, Arms Dealer in Prisoner Swap, Remembered as ‘Monster’

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Viktor Bout, the former Russian military officer convicted of illegal arms trafficking in U.S. courts in 2012, and who was serving a 25-year prison sentence, has had his sentence commuted and is being repatriated as part of a prisoner exchange that freed United States basketball star Brittney Griner from prison in Russia. Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” started an air freight business in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, which prosecutors alleged he used to transport military-grade weapons around the world, often supplying arms to combatants on opposing sides of the same conflicts. In an indictmentmore

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Democrats Secure 51-Seat Majority in US Senate With Georgia Runoff Win

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday that Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock’s runoff election win was an important boost for Democrats. “The practical effects of the 51-seat majority — it’s big. It’s significant,” he said. “We can breathe a sigh of relief.”  The Senate had stood for the past two years at a 50-50 tie with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote. But with Warnock winning re-election to his first full six-year term in office, Democrats have now gained a seat and secured a clear majority for the rest of President Joe Biden’s first term inmore

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Republican, Democratic Senators Predict Continuing US Support for Ukraine

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The U.S. Congress is considering the White House’s request for $38 billion in additional support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia aggression. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Senator Jim Risch say they believe the aid will be approved in the coming weeks. The two senators have been strong supporters of aid to Ukraine, part of bipartisan congressional support that, if the latest appropriation bill passes, will deliver more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine this year. The senators sat down with VOA Georgian Service’s managing editor Ia Meurmishvili on November 30 to discuss U.S. policy toward Ukrainemore

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Democratic Sen. Warnock Wins Georgia Runoff Against Walker

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Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s current term and capping an underwhelming midterm cycle for the GOP in the last major vote of the year.  With Warnock’s second runoff victory in as many years, Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority, gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania. There will be divided government, however, with Republicans having narrowly flipped House control.  “After a hard-fought campaign — or, should Imore

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Criminal Referrals Coming From January 6 US Capitol Riot Probe

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The U.S. congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year is planning to make referrals to the Justice Department recommending criminal prosecutions, panel chairman Bennie Thompson said Tuesday. Thompson did not disclose whether former President Donald Trump would be one of the targets. He said the nine-member panel is meeting later Tuesday to discuss specifics of its recommendations as it wraps up its probe of the mayhem that unfolded as about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol Building to try to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. “Atmore

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Arizona Certifies 2022 Election Despite Republican Complaints

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Arizona’s top officials certified the midterm election results Monday, formalizing victories for Democrats over Republicans who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged. The certification opens a five-day window for formal election challenges. Republican Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor, is expected to file a lawsuit after weeks of criticizing the administration of the election. Election results have largely been certified without issue around the country, but Arizona was an exception. Several Republican-controlled counties delayed their certification despite no evidence of problems with the vote count. Cochise County in southeastern Arizona blew past the deadline last week, forcingmore

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Surprising Words & Phrases Invented by US Presidents  

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When America’s leaders can’t think of the perfect word for certain situations, they sometimes make one up. And those new words often go down in history. From “lunatic fringe” (Teddy Roosevelt) and “iffy” (Franklin D. Roosevelt) to “snowmageddon” (Barack Obama) and “bigly” (Donald Trump), the terms coined by U.S. presidents are as unique as the American experience. “We’re really creating our own institutions through language,” says Paul Dickson, author of “Words from the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by America’s Presidents.” “So, when John Quincy Adams creates the word ‘gag rule,’ or somebody creates another word thatmore

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Fighting Words: Founding Fathers Irked England by Inventing American English

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Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, coined the words “electioneering” and “indecipherable.” John Adams (No. 2) came up with “caucus.” James Madison (No. 4) was the first to use “squatter” when referring to someone who occupies a property or territory they don’t own. As they set out to build a new nation, America’s Founding Fathers were determined to give the fledgling republic its own identity and culture by making up new words that were unique to the American experience. “It was thought by many of the early presidents — Jefferson, Adams, [George] Washington and others — that they were doing somethingmore

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Trump Documents Probe: Court Halts Mar-a-Lago Special Master Review

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A unanimous federal appeals court on Thursday ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information. The decision by the three-judge panel represents a significant win for federal prosecutors, clearing the way for them to use as part of their investigation the entire tranche of documents seized during an August 8 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. It also amounts to a sharp repudiation of arguments by Trump’s lawyers, who for months had said that the former presidentmore

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Senate Moves to Avert Rail Strike Amid Dire Warnings

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The Senate moved quickly Thursday to avert a rail strike that the Biden administration and business leaders warned would have had devastating consequences for the nation’s economy.  The Senate passed a bill to bind rail companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached between the rail companies and union leaders in September. That settlement had been rejected by some of the 12 unions involved, creating the possibility of a strike beginning December 9.  The Senate vote was 80-15. It came one day after the House voted to impose the agreement. The measure now goes to President Joe Biden’smore

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It’s Decorative White House Season, Americans

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The White House is bright with holiday cheer, an annual tradition meant to delight and remind Americans of the importance of the end-of-year holidays. This year’s theme is “We the People,” a nod to the most powerful force in America: the American people. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House. …

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